Evernight Publishing
www.evernightpublishing.com
Copyright© 2014 Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy
ISBN: 978-1-77130-930-1
Cover Artist: Sour Cherry Designs
Editor: JC Chute
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
DEDICATION
For my uncle, Raymond Neely, who once lived and dreamed in southwestern Oklahoma and called Lawton home. He shared his appreciation for the Native American portion of our shared heritage with me and he would enjoy this tale.
THE COMANCHE VAMPIRE
Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy
Copyright © 2014
Prologue
June 2, 1875
Not a breath of wind rippled the tall prairie grasses as the band of warriors rode in silent defeat toward the fort. Pea’hocso stared toward the western horizon, at a blue sky filled with thick white clouds. They would bring storms by evening and he wondered if the gods mourned with the Quahadi or raged at them. Time would reveal which, he thought as his heart weighed heavier than the oppressive summer heat. Although some of the others slumped, Pea’hocso sat straight and tall, the way a Comanche warrior should. He’d ride during these last moments of freedom with pride and skill. Saddle sore and heartsick, he refused to yield anything to the Indian agent or taibo, the white man.
Often, Pea’hocso wished he’d died in battle. An honorable death, and he would never have been forced to endure the coming bondage. But although the ta’siwoo had all but vanished from the earth, Pea’hocso would continue and outlive the buffalo. He just didn’t know why.
Quanah Parker, son of Comanche Chief Peta Nocono and a woman stolen from the whites long ago, led their ragged band. A year and a half ago, Pea’hocso counted a thousand warriors in the Quahadi, but less than four hundred rode behind their leader now. In their last war against the taibo, the final effort to expel the intruders from tribal lands and save their people, they’d lost many: some to death. More to disease. And still more, who didn’t wait.
Many Comanche had trudged back, broken and bitter, to the reservation and tried to learn the new ways. Pea’hocso rode among the final Comanche warriors, the last of the people to live free. Their efforts had failed and so they returned, disgraced and broken, to Fort Sill. The 4th Cavalry had driven them to this end, hounding them through the seasons under Colonel McKenzie. If Quanah hadn’t brought them here, the blue coats had vowed to kill them. Pea’hocso thought it might’ve been better to die as a warrior, but it hadn’t been his decision.
The storm struck before they reached the Kiowa-Comanche Agency at the fort. Winds howled with fury as rain descended from the heavens and drenched everyone. Accustomed to all weathers, none of the Quahadi flinched, but instead rode faster.
They arrived on post in a wild tattoo of hoof beats and noise. Lightning streaked the skies overhead with vivid fire, and the voice of thunder boomed. The rain turned to hail, which pummeled and punished Pea’hocso until he decided the gods were angry. It would’ve been better to die free beneath the wide prairie sky than live confined by the white man, tied to a post like their cur dogs.
He had no woman, children or family left. His brothers died as warriors, faces painted, their weapons in hand. Their mother died long ago and their father ended his life an old man, sad to see the last of the once-great buffalo herds. Pea’hocso might still have a sister somewhere, but he didn’t know if she lived or had died. His wife, Aiyana, died giving birth to his third son and the child followed her in death. Pea’hocso’s boys had defended their village from blue coats at McClellan Creek. One died there, the other of smallpox at Fort Concho far from home. Two of his daughters died of some fever, one in his arms.
Other Comanche had all yielded with the Medicine Lodge Treaty, after the war that divided the white men against each other––but not the Quohada. They’d fought the buffalo soldiers, the white men with black skins, across the plains for two full seasons but were ordered to go to the place called ‘reservation’. While other Comanche donned the calico shirts and heavy pants white settlers wore, took up the plows and learned to speak the white tongue, the Quohada rebelled. They returned to the open plains and lived free, joined by other Cheyenne warriors and renegades. Time defeated them, along with the ceaseless trek of the white faces into the Comancheria. If the ta’siwoo hadn’t been slaughtered for their hides and tongues, the Comanche people might’ve survived. But the buffalo provided all to the people: food, shelter, clothing, tools, and life. Without them, their existence would end. Hearts like the one deep within Pea’hocso’s chest refused to accept the reality and struggled, but now he knew the time of the Comanche was no more.
Their horses were put into a corral with Army livestock. Pea’hocso watched, silent. He said nothing when they filed into a barracks building to spend the night. The taste of the beans, brought in the kettles, was strange upon his tongue and he didn’t care for the hard baked rounds called biscuits. Hunger forced him to eat, but the strange food wasn’t what he’d choose. Nor were the close quarters where odors of sweat and stench rose into his nose with force. He preferred fresh air and solitude, and so he wrapped his blanket around his shoulders and walked outside. No one stopped him.
Pea’hocso wandered away from the barracks and felt better. He stared upward at the clearing sky. Clouds scudded away to reveal the full moon: the one Texans called the Comanche moon, reminiscent of a time when warriors had prowled and raided.
A powerful longing rose up within Pea’hocso’s soul to slip into the night and let his stallion gallop across the open country. He ached to go into battle, to take horses or plunder. Pea’hocso’s skin prickled with blood lust. If he could hunt buffalo, he wouldn’t want to kill … but with few ta’siwoo left, he desired revenge.
Pea’hocso might’ve vanished into the humid night. He could’ve taken his mount from the corrals and bolted. And if not for the woman, he would’ve done so. His calf muscles tensed, and his body stiffened in preparation to launch in flight, when she spoke.
“Good evening.” Her voice carried the same kind of deepness as the blooming honeysuckle he smelled nearby. Although he understood a great deal of English, Pea’hocso preferred not to soil his tongue with it or use the translation of his name, Big Eagle. He turned to see who spoke, expecting a white woman in bonnet and shawl. Her skin gleamed pale in the darkness, but she wore neither hat nor bonnet. Hair black as midnight streamed over her shoulders and down her back with abandon and he stared, struck by the sight. Comanche women often kept their locks short for ease, unlike the men, who let their hair grow. She gazed back at him, from eyes deep blue as a lake beneath a summer sky. “This is a wild place, isn’t it? But then you’re wild, too.”
Her voice didn’t sound like any woman he’d heard speak before so he thought she might be from a distant place. He’d ignore anyone else, but this woman tempted him and so he said, dredging up English with difficulty, “I am Comanche.”
Laughter poured from her mouth, pretty as moonlight and as tinkling as a small creek over rocks. “I thought so. I’ve seen Comanche before. Although I’m Romany, a gypsy woman, I lived for a time in Texas.”
If she’d seen Comanche warriors, then she should know how dangerous he could be. His hand strayed to his belt, fingered his k
nife and he knew how easily he could take her life. It would be swift and savage. A part of him would glory in the act, but her eyes mesmerized him, and held him captive. Something about her hair, so wild and almost wicked, intrigued him and drew him closer. His restlessness shifted into something different, toward another way of release and his cock hardened inside his buckskins. He wouldn’t kill this one but he’d use her to forget his pain, to steal a bit of sweetness to lighten the bitterness of his life. She might be beautiful, but she deserved nothing more.
He hadn’t used a woman for pleasure in a long time. The last one he’d loved had been his wife. Pea’hocso remembered his wife’s soft skin, her scent, and her strong legs wrapped tight around his. A flood of want swamped him and he grasped the Romany woman into a harsh embrace. Without thought, without courtesy and for no reason but to vent physical release he took her mouth and owned it. He kissed her with harsh abandon, his lips ground hard against hers. He hoped she’d struggle. He wanted her to fight or to fear, but she didn’t.
No, this one gave back the fire he lit and burned him. She didn’t struggle against his arms but gripped him with hot hands so tightly it hurt. The woman used her tongue to enter his mouth as she mimicked sex with rapid in and out motions.
Pea’hocso yielded and stood without protest, more used than user now. Her heated lips seared his mouth and left it to trail down his throat. She sucked and nibbled and kissed her way down to the left side of his neck. He felt her powerful need in his blood and the strength of it hastened his heart like a drum. He stopped thinking, forgot where he stood and why as he got lost in the passion. Pleasure surrounded him and he sank into it, mindless and heedless.
He drifted until she bit him, hard and fast. Her teeth punctured his skin and pain exploded outward. The woman latched to him like a snapping turtle and as he thrashed in an effort to break contact, he found he couldn’t work free. Something warm and liquid flowed down his throat and Pea’hocso smelled the sharp, familiar scent of blood. She bit again, another spot and then a third. Each hurt with sharp pain. His head whirled and he weakened. He no longer enjoyed the encounter and when he heard the unmistakable sound of sucking, he realized she drank from him. With fear and sick horror, he knew what she was. There were many names for such creatures, things of darkness who hunted human prey. He’d heard a white man call them ‘vampires’ but Pea’hocso remembered stories from other tribes who talked about Two Faces and a few wandering Navajo who spoke of skin walkers. The name didn’t matter, not now. All were evil and delivered consequences.
Whatever they were, he hoped death came first.
The sole thing worse than surrender, defeat, humiliation, and the end of the Comanche world would be to live. Pea’hocso chanted his death song, using old words. Some, so ancient he didn’t even know the full meaning. He prayed for an end but when the woman raised her blood-smeared mouth from his throat, she laughed.
“You are cursed,” she told him in her odd accent. “Your kind, Comanche, killed my family in a raid. And I did not die, but became what I am, a vampire. You will live forever by night and have all eternity to pay for what you did as a warrior. If you walk by day, you will look sick but when dark falls, you will become strong and seek blood. Who you bite thrice will become what you are. And you’ll live to the end of time.”
She laughed then, with a terrible and crazy sound both witch-wild and eerie. She slipped away into the shadows and although he heard her footsteps, Pea’hocso couldn’t see the woman.
He lifted a shaking hand and touched the blood streaming from three wounds.
An hour ago, he would’ve thought things could never be worse, but now, his life was beyond imagining.
By the time he sought the company of the others, the bites healed of their own accord. He tried to bring death. Pea’hocso stabbed his knife deep into his heart and pain followed. Blood rushed from him in a river and he sank into black nothing. Death came to meet him but retreated. Everything reversed and within an hour, he stood in his bloodstained shirt, not living, not departed but undead.
Forever.
Chapter One
Lawton, Oklahoma
Present Day
The narrow track led away from the two-lane blacktop and snaked its way across the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge. If there hadn’t been a sun-faded, much-dented mailbox on a crooked post with hard to read letters spelling out his name, ‘Ned Big Eagle’, no one would guess it was a driveway. Ned preferred it this way. He didn’t want visitors and few people came to his humble home. He could count how many had entered his place over the past century without running out of fingers. Privacy mattered to Ned and he liked his solitary life. Living on the edge of what he considered some of the last bits of unspoiled prairie and a place where the buffalo still roamed pleased him too. From his front door he could gaze out across the open country and view some of the mountains. Although he seldom saw the buffalo herd grazing, he knew trails and paths, which led to their location. If he tasted loneliness, he never complained. But he wasn’t a recluse. He went out almost daily into the bustling world of Lawton, Oklahoma. At times he ventured during daylight hours, but most of the time he waited for darkness, to move among people.
Ned sat on the front step of his house and watched the sun slide down the western sky. The vivid blaze of orange tempered with purple shadows soothed him and the beauty bridged his early life with the present. He’d watched many sunsets out on the open plains long ago and they remained one of few things that hadn’t changed over time. He named Mount Sheridan and some of the smaller mountains in his mind and then sighed. He crushed out his unfiltered cigarette, one of his few vices, but it didn’t matter. Health risks didn’t matter for someone immortal. Ned headed in and changed into his black jeans and the long-sleeved white dress shirt required for work. He donned his tie and nametag, tamed his long hair into a single braid, then filled his pockets. He strolled outside and climbed into his old pickup. On the way into Lawton he reflected on his existence and his mundane job at one of the Comanche nation casinos. As a dealer, he interacted with the public nightly. He didn’t enjoy the work or hate it. Like many other things, his job existed.
En route, he stopped for a burger. A carnivore at heart, Ned adapted to the white man’s food with effort. In the beginning, much of what they ate sickened him but he learned what he could eat, what he tolerated and what he liked. He preferred meat, above all else: buffalo if he could get it, and beef as a close second. Ned ate pork on occasion, but he refused to eat chicken or any other poultry. He didn’t know if he liked the taste or not, but Comanches never ate birds. They were weak and foolish, nothing a warrior wanted in his mouth or belly. Steaks ranked at the top of Ned’s favorites but he’d come to enjoy a good hamburger too. Dressed with lettuce, onion, tomatoes, and pickles, a burger provided about all the vegetables he ever ate.
Seated inside What-A-Burger at a booth, he relished the thick burger. He didn’t need to eat, but sometimes he liked to for the taste. As he finished the meal, he tossed his trash. I’ll need blood, soon. Probably tonight, or tomorrow at the latest but I’ve gotta have some. If lack of blood would destroy him, Ned would endure whatever torment necessary … but it wouldn’t. He’d wither and waste away but he wouldn’t die. He knew because he’d tried. Unlike some of the few vampires he’d come across over the last hundred-plus years, Ned didn’t like blood. He didn’t enjoy the hunt because there was no sport. Humans made it far too easy. So he drank when necessary, once or twice a week and kept it to a minimum. His job at the casino made it simple to find prey. Someone was stumbling around at any hour, and approaching them proved to be effortless. Most never knew what happened, and he’d never taken more than the minimum necessary. Ned made a vow when he first became a vampire he wouldn’t inflict his endless torment on anyone else and he hadn’t. He took care not to bite any individual three times. His outstanding memory made it possible.
He reported to work, clocked in and headed to the tables. Mindy, a bri
ght-eyed, fresh-faced blonde grinned as he approached. “Hi, Ned. I’m ready to go if you’re ready to take over for me.”
“Sure,” he replied. He tried to keep contact with his co-workers friendly but at arm’s length. Over the long decades, he’d made a few friends but none lasted more than ten or twelve years. When they aged and he remained the same, questions followed, ones he’d rather not answer. Lying came hard to his tongue. “How’s it been tonight?”
“Busy for a Wednesday,” she told him. “How are you doing?”
“I’m good.” Learning the polite responses kept him challenged because they changed with each generation. “Everything going all right? How’s your daughter?”
“Peyton’s great. She just started 4-H and loves it. After I pick her up from the babysitter I promised I’d take her out to get some chicken nuggets.”
“Have a good evening.” Ned turned to the table but Mindy lingered. She let her fingers trail down his arm and leaned too close. Her admiration for him was obvious, but he ignored it. Getting involved with a woman would be a disaster larger than a tornado, more damaging than a prairie fire. A woman, the Romany gypsy he’d never seen again, destroyed his shattered life and turned him into a monster. He’d met a few rare ladies he would’ve liked to know better, but Ned always walked away. If he ever met one who mattered, how could he explain his undead status? It’d be impossible, and he had nothing to offer but trouble. Ned looked, but seldom touched and when the need reared up within his body, he indulged in sexual pleasures, but for the physical release alone.
He sometimes craved companionship and longed once in a while for what he’d shared with Aiyana, but Ned knew such things were out of his reach. If he dreamed of a woman in his simple home or imagined sitting across the table from a pair of beautiful eyes who drank him with their gaze, he reminded himself he couldn’t have either.
The Comanche Vampire Page 1
